


guiana chestnut

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley's Plants (Good Omens), Gen, Inspired by the Incorrect Good Omens Twitter Account
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 04:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19288615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: At first, Crowley just thought it was a really good plant.





	guiana chestnut

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bookworm83197](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookworm83197/gifts).



> Inspired by the amazing [Incorrect Good Omens](https://twitter.com/wrongomens/status/1140729890528010242) twitter account.

At first, Crowley just thought it was a really good plant.

It wasn’t the worst assumption — Aziraphale had given him a lovely guiana chestnut, with a braided trunk and plenty of green leaves. It looked perfect. In Crowley’s defence, he thought that it was doing so well because Aziraphale _wanted_ it to do well. Reality didn’t quite work the same way for them, not the way it worked for humans. Aziraphale hated the way Crowley shouted at his plants and ruled with an iron fist of fear — so it wasn’t out of the question that Aziraphale’s hope was personally keeping the plant in Crowley’s good books. The leaves were green and glossy, there were no bugs anywhere near it, and it always brought a smile to Crowley’s face when he went around watering in the evening.

Whether this was due to the beautiful plant or the fact that it made him think of Aziraphale was immaterial, obviously.

Crowley even carried it around to show all the other plants how good a job it was doing, and how much they had to live up to. “See?” he said, thrusting it in the leaves of the spiderplant that was on its last warning. “See what you could be if you just had ambition? If you had drive? If you refused to allow your leaves to yellow? This is the true pinnacle of gardening. A triumph. This is what I wish the rest of you would be!”

The plants shook, though in hindsight Crowley wondered if it had been from fear or laughter. 

He showed Aziraphale whenever he came over how well the plant was doing. Aziraphale was always attentive, smiling proudly when Crowley told him that this was his best plant. “What did you name it?” he asked, crouching to say hello to it as if it mattered whether they were at eye-level or not. 

“Name it? Why would I name it, it’s a guiana chestnut. I don’t have multiple — wait, even if I did, you don’t name plants!” Crowley said, catching himself before he began to think like Aziraphale. Naming plants was the beginning of the end — you can’t get rid of something with a _name_. Everyone knew that. 

Aziraphale smiled as if to say that he definitely knew that, and that was rather the aim of the question in the first place.

“I think it could be a Jennifer. Or maybe a Wilhelm.”

Crowley pulled Aziraphale bodily up from where he was still crouched next to The Plant Which Had No Name And Never Would. “They are both terrible names for plants,” Crowley began, and held up a finger when a grin began to steal onto Aziraphale’s face in much the same way that Crowley had stolen several famous works of art. “They are both terrible names for plants because plants _do not have names_. I will not allow such nonsense in my home.”

He should have been more suspicious when Aziraphale let it drop. He should have been more suspicious through the entire thing, the entire _four months_ it took for Crowley to discover the truth.

It happened, at last, like this:

Crowley had done quite the biggest, most terrifying, most successful Yelling Session ever undertaken. He’d gone out onto the balcony to see that even next door’s plants were trembling, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if plants in the next suburb over had been quaking in their root systems. The only plant that hadn’t performed its fear of Crowley was the guiana chestnut. Crowley couldn’t understand why, because it had been a jolly good generalised terrorising, and he hadn’t excepted the guiana from any of it, because even when a plant was doing well he found it useful to scare them out of considering to lower their standards.

He wanted to know why this plant had an iron will, so he inspected it carefully, each leaf appearing free of imperfections. He decided to snip a few leaves from off the top just to make his point, but when he took the scissors to it there was no sap, no green sticky inside to the branches. It was suspiciously similar to the outside, and once his brain suggested the terrible possibility that he had spent four months — _four months_ — caring for and openly praising such an _abomination_ , he realised with dawning horror that it must be true.

He immediately broke several traffic laws getting to Aziraphale’s flat, and then when that appeared empty he went to Madame Tracy’s, the only other place he could think of Aziraphale being. Apparently a friendship had blossomed out of the body-sharing experience, and mostly consisted of having tea every Tuesday at half ten.

Madame Tracy gave a little scream as the front door of her flat was blasted open by Crowley’s pure sense of dramatics. The hinge didn’t really allow for the range of motion necessary to slam against the wall, but Crowley didn’t know that, so that’s what it did.

Aziraphale was frozen halfway through the act of pouring Madame Tracy tea. 

“FOUR MONTHS,” Crowley yelled, rounding on him.

Aziraphale, to his credit, knew immediately what Crowley meant. “It’s not that big a deal—” he said calmly, putting the teapot down.

“Wait, slow down, what’s going on?” Madame Tracy asked, looking between them. They both ignored her. 

“YOU GIFTED ME A FAKE PLANT AND WATCHED ME MISTING IT,” Crowley shouted, his wings out behind him for the intimidation factor, though of course it didn’t work on Aziraphale, “FOR FOUR MONTHS.”

“You were so kind to that plant,” Aziraphale said, still at a perfectly reasonable volume as if they were discussing tea preferences.

“IT’S MADE OF PLASTIC.” Crowley grabbed the front of Aziraphale’s shirt, lifting him up and momentarily being frustrated that there was no convenient wall to haul him up against.

“I must admit I didn’t expect it to go on quite this long,” Aziraphale said. He then had the absolute gall to chuckle at him. “But I could hardly tell you, could I? Think of it this way — it _was_ a very good plant.”

Crowley was speechless with fury.

“And it’s given everything an impossible standard to live up to, which is what you want, isn’t it? That’s what you expect of your plants anyway, so nothing’s changed.”

“I put that plant forward as a model, Aziraphale! The plants will never respect me again! They probably knew this whole time!”

“Probably, yes.”

“How _could_ you.”

“I just wanted you to be happy, my dear boy,” Aziraphale said gently. “And you were.”

Crowley at last let go of him, and Aziraphale busied himself with rearranging his clothes, studiously looking at his waistcoat and not at Crowley.

“I’ll have to start over,” Crowley said, sounding lost. “I’ll have to give all of my plants to that Newton boy, the one Device is fond of.”

If there was one thing Crowley could say about Newton Pulsifer it was that he looked like anything he touched died, so Crowley thought this was perhaps a suitable punishment.

“Tea. I need tea. No — alcohol. Tea first, then alcohol. I cannot believe — I’ll have to go out to Surrey to find a garden centre that won’t laugh at the sight of me. No, angel, don’t you dare sit next to me. I need to mourn my garden in peace.”

The next day Crowley found a lemon tree outside his front door, accompanied by a note in familiar handwriting.

_This one is real, I promise._


End file.
